The Conscience of the Rich Read Online Free

it became not too difficult to pick out features that might conceivably be ‘typical’. For a face so fine-drawn his nostrils spread a little more than one would expect, and his under-lip stood out more fully. But that was like water-divining, I thought, the difficulties of which were substantially reduced if one knew where the water was. After mixing with the Marches and their friends and knowing them for years, I still sometimes wondered whether I should recognize Charles as a Jew if I now saw him for the first time.
    I paid my first visit to Bryanston Square on a clear cold February night. I walked the mile and a half from my lodgings: along Wigmore Street the shops were locked, their windows shining: in the side-streets, the great houses stood dark, unlived-in now. Then streets and squares, cars by the kerb, lighted windows: at last I was walking round the square, staring up at numbers, working out how many houses before the Marches’.
    I arrived at the corner house; over the portico there was engraved the inscription, in large plain letters, 17 BRYANSTON SQUARE.
    A footman opened the door, and the butler took my overcoat. With a twinge of self-consciousness, I thought it was probably the cheapest he had received for years. He led the way to the drawing-room, and Charles was at once introducing me to his sister Katherine, who was about four years younger than himself. As she looked at me, her eyes were as bright as his; in both of them, they were the feature one noticed first. Her expression was eager, her skin fresh. At a first sight, it looked as though Charles’ good looks had been transferred to a fuller, more placid face.
    ‘I’ve been trying to bully Charles into taking me out to meet you,’ she said after a few moments. ‘You were becoming rather a legend, you know.’
    ‘You’re underestimating your own powers,’ Charles said to her.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘You’ve cross-questioned me about Lewis. You’ve done everything but track me. I never realized you had so much character.’
    ‘It was the same with his Cambridge friends,’ said Katherine. ‘He was just as secretive. It’s absolutely monstrous having him for a brother – if one happens to be an inquisitive person.’
    She had picked up some of his tricks of speech. One could not miss the play of sympathy and affection between them. Charles was laughing, although he stood about restlessly waiting for their father to come in.
    Katherine answered questions before I had asked them, as she saw my eyes looking curiously round the room. It was large and dazzlingly bright, very full of furniture, the side-tables and the far wall cluttered with photographs; opposite the window stood a full-length painting of Charles as a small boy. He was dressed for riding, and was standing against a background of the Row. The colouring was the reverse of timid – the hair bright gold, cheeks pink and white, eyes grey.
    ‘He was rather a beautiful little boy, wasn’t he?’ she said. ‘No one ever thought of painting me at that age. Or at any other, as far as that goes. I was a useful sensible shape from the start.’
    Charles said: ‘The reason they didn’t paint you was that ‘Mr L’ – (their father’s first name was Leonard and I had already heard them call him by his nickname) – ‘decided that there wasn’t much chance of your surviving childhood anyway. And if he tempted fortune by having you painted, he was certain that you’d be absolutely condemned to death.’
    I inspected the photographs on the far wall. They were mostly nineteenth-century, some going back to daguerreotype days.
    ‘I can’t help about those,’ said Katherine. ‘I don’t know anything about them. I’m no good at ancestor worship.’ She said it sharply, decisively.
    Then she returned, with the repetitiveness that I was used to in Charles, to the reasons why she had not been painted – anxious to leave nothing to doubt, anxious not to be misunderstood.
    It was now